Wooshy Changes

I've decided to change this blog a bit. I am going to make this a more general tidbits blog rather than a technical only. So anything can and will go here. I'll just say what I see. I've been thinking what that might entail.

• Coding (Perl, Java...)
• Security (Issues, vulnerabilities)
• Social Networking (Facebook)
• Computing (anything not mentioned above)
• Sport/Gaming
• Entertainment
• Music
  
• News
• Travel/Food & Drink
• Misc stuff

I've started to post a fair bit on a friend's techno blog at michaeldaw.org

Perl Threads

One of things when dealing with some perl articles that some of the code may be depreciated. The point is taken for threads. The old "Thread" package is mentioned in code snippet. However the perldoc.perl.org reference discourages its use...

For old code and interim backwards compatibility, the Thread module has been reworked to function as a frontend for both 5005threads and ithreads. Note that the compatibility is not complete: because the data sharing models are directly opposed, anything to do with data sharing has to be thought differently. With the ithreads you must explicitly share() variables between the threads. For new code the use of the Thread module is discouraged and the direct use of the threads and threads::shared modules is encouraged instead.

Furthermore, when coming to use the new "threads" package, the first thing I encountered when replacing the above script was a "A thread exited while %d other threads were still running". I don't think the advised solution from the perldoc.perl.org is all that helpful. It says:

A thread (not necessarily the main thread) exited while there were still other threads running. Usually it's a good idea to first collect the return values of the created threads by joining them, and only then exit from the main thread.

Which I followed... Except using join in this case, ran each thread one at a time. The above statement to me implies the problem lay with the other threads exiting. But when I tried to use sleep in the child threads, I still had same issue except naturally I had to wait for the same response. The solution is in fact to ensure the main thread doesn't exit before its child threads complete as demonstrated in this forum.
An example on how to avoid this would have been useful.

Perl Networking

A couple of useful links here are at linuxjournal and perlfect.

Facestalking

I picked up this thing about facestalking. You can view other people's pictures and see what they are up to. However, you do need add friends to this. Or do you? It looks like that you can view other people's profiles without friending them. If you go in 'privacy' and then 'poke, message and friend request', you can see who can see your profile.

I'd be very careful who you friend as this man found out the hard way.

So much so, it looks some workplaces are barring them.

Poker and hacking

This hasn't come as a big surprise. Poker has gained a lot positive media. Every other celebrity seemingly want a piece of the action. Combine an interest with this with the Internet, it's hardly surprising that online poker has taken off.

Power hacking? Is that possible? I mean you aren't like to slide an extra ace into your set, are you? But there are a number hacks and tricks that can be made. There is a good reference for online poker hacks that is not filled with too much poker lingo. There's a variety of hacks include the bog standard phishing, collusion and poker bots. However, most of these are on the client side. The server side seems safe as a reputable site would use certificates and cryptography.

Perl and Windows

I've decided that Perl isn't up to scratch when used on a Windows environment. The lack of support for catalyst for windows is something that crossed my mind in the past. But now I've discovered how crap activestate's ppm (perl package manager) really is. I could hardly find any packages with images (let alone the right one). On further googling, it appears for example, GD (one of the main perl graphics packages) is not available on the activestate repository for whatever reason. This is discussed here

Sans Event in London

This just in, there's a training event offered up by sans in good old London town!